We are pleased today to announce our follow-on investment in Pulse Labs, a scalable testing and analytical service that makes it easier for Alexa skill developers to vet their creations with users around the world.

Today we are delighted to announce that Echo Spot is now shipping to customers in the UK, Germany and Austria. Echo Spot brings customers everything they love about Alexa and Echo in an all-new compact design, combining the power of voice with a visual display.

As you create more skills, you can add advanced features to deliver a more conversational experience to your users. We recently updated the decision tree sample skill to use dialog management and entity resolution.

Teen developer Austin Wilson from Rocky River, Ohio, likes to dive deep and learn how things work. While searching the web last year for information on Raspberry Pi, he was inspired to build a voice-powered car using the Alexa Skills Kit.

At CES 2018, we saw your hard work come to life, bringing Alexa to new categories and enabling voice control on additional products. Innovators shared plans to add Alexa to PCs, cars, headphones, and more. Check out the recap to get inspired, then start building your voice-first creation.

When building conversational user interfaces, it’s important to think about continued engagement and high-quality interactions. In this 2-part blog series, we tear down a skill called Pet Match to show you the ins and outs of dialog management and entity resolution.